. "Let me
go, and I'll try to get them to come back here with me--oh do let me
go!"

But Simpkins only held him the faster.

"Shut him up in there for a bit," said Boyds, pointing to a small inner
room opening into the one where they were,--"shut him in there till he
thinks better of it," and Simpkins was preparing to do so when Tim
turned to make a last appeal. "Don't lock me up whatever you do," he
said, clasping his hands in entreaty; "they'll die of fright if they're
left alone. I'd rather you'd go with me nor leave them alone. Yes, I'll
show you where they are if you'll let me run on first so as they won't
be so frightened."

Simpkins glanced at Boyds--he was a kinder man than the superintendent
and really sharper, though much less conceited. He was half inclined to
believe in Tim.

"What do you say to that?" he asked.

But Boyds shook his head.

"There's some trick in it. Let him run on first--I daresay! The
children's safe enough with those as sent him here to find out. No, no;
lock him up, and I'll step round to Mr. Bartlemore's,"--Mr. Bartlemore
was the nearest magistrate,--"and see what he thinks about it all. It'll
not take me long, and it'll show this young man here we're in earnest.
Lock him up."

Simpkins pushed Tim, though not roughly, into the little room, and
turned the key on him. The boy no longer made any resistance or appeal.
Mr. Boyds put on his hat and went out, and the police office returned to
its former state of sleepy quiet so far as appearances went. But behind
the locked door a poor ragged boy was sobbing his eyes out, twisting and
writhing himself about in real agony of mind.

"Oh, my master and missy, why did I leave you? What will they be doing?
Oh they was right and I was wrong! The perlice is a bad, wicked,
unbelieving lot--oh my, oh my!--if onst I was but out o' here----" but
he stopped suddenly. The words he had said without thinking seemed to
say themselves over again to him as if some one else had addressed them
to him.

"Out o' here," why shouldn't he get out of here? And Tim looked round
him curiously. There was a small window and it was high up. There was no
furniture but the bench on which he was sitting. But Tim was the son of
a mason, and it was not for nothing that he had lived with gipsies for
so long. He was a perfect cat at climbing, and as slippery as an eel in
the way he could squeeze himself through places which you would have
thought scarcely wide enough f